Perfect Dark

Posted: 03/22/10

In the hallowed halls of N64 shooters, Perfect Dark hovers at the heavens. Microsoft is mining our nostalgia and adding online multiplayer, HD resolutions, improved textures and frame-rates--and you don't even need a RAM expansion to play it. The nearly-10-year-old shooter has you slipping on the saucy British accent of superspy Joanna Dark, and embarking on a multitude of missions full of aliens, stealth, gadgets, and lots and lots of shooting with lots and lots of guns.

Perfect Dark certainly shows its age. The AI has a penchant for pratfalls, while those improved textures tend to repeat, and objectives can seem murky, with no waypoint markers or maps. If you can surmount these hurdles, you'll enjoy multipart goals, a cornball sci-fi script and an armory full of impressive weapons, like the wall-piercing FarSight. While far from perfect, your 800 Microsoft Points nets you a whole lot of game, with over 15 missions with several degrees of difficulty that change up objectives.

The litany of multiplayer options is also staggering, with online, splitscreen, bots, challenges, team games, co-op, and a degree of tweaking for custom games that is nearly unparalleled. There's also a mode called counter-operative, where you can spawn as an enemy in someone's single-player run. Multiplayer lacks the refinements seen over the last 10 years, so prepare to lean on auto-aim, memorize weapon spawns, and feel the cold, asymmetric cut of maps like Felicity as you punch your way to a laptop gun.

With cheats to unlock, multiplayer ranks to climb, and new, devious, level-specific crown awards to figure out, this blast from the past is still a blast to play as an un-evolved envoy of modern-day shooters.

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